Since the 1990s, human trafficking has become the battleground for competing discourses on human rights and penality. While rights solutions are generally presented as in opposition to crime-control measures, in the context of anti-trafficking interventions, rights-based initiatives and criminal governance are often linked together both discursively and in practice. Drawing on the findings of Discourse Analysis of 120 texts about trafficking, this paper explores how dominant discourses and alternative voices construct the relationship between human rights and penality. It is contended that penality is framed as a crucial tenet of human rights. Dominant discourses (the ‘law enforcement’ and the ‘victims first’ discourses) link human rights to state coercive action, seen as a necessary component of their effectiveness. Alternative voices (the ‘incompatibility’ and the ‘transformative justice’ discourses) reject the appropriateness of penal intervention, but they end up preserving what they denounce.

自 20 世纪 90 年代以来，贩卖人口已成为有关人权和惩罚的竞争话语的战场。虽然权利解决方案通常被视为与犯罪控制措施相对立，但在打击贩运干预措施的背景下，基于权利的举措和刑事治理往往在话语和实践中联系在一起。本文利用对 120 篇关于贩运的文本的话语分析结果，探讨了主流话语和替代声音如何建构人权与刑罚之间的关系。有人争辩说，惩罚是人权的一项重要原则。主流话语（“执法”和“受害者至上”话语）将人权与国家强制行动联系起来，被视为其有效性的必要组成部分。